Gaza’s Health Ministry said Monday that Israeli forces killed 24 Palestinians and wounded 71 in the previous 24-hour period as Israeli strikes continued across the Strip.
According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, at least five Palestinians were killed by an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Two more Palestinians were killed by strikes near the Indonesia Hospital in Beit Lahia.
Both Beith Lahia and Jabalia have been under a total Israeli siege since early October as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign to force Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza.
WAFA also reported an Israeli strike on a house in the southern city of Rafah killed at least four Palestinians. In central Gaza, Israeli shelling near the Nuseirat refugee camp injured five Palestinians.
Heavy rains and flooding are also devastating Palestinian civilians sheltering in tents. Gaza’s Media Office said 10,000 tents were either washed away or damaged by floods on Monday.
The UN’s Palestinian relief agency, UNWRA, said 500,000 people in Gaza are threatened by sewage floods that can cause disease, and Palestinians are at a higher risk of getting sick due to dropping temperatures as winter approaches.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the latest violence has brought its death toll since October 2023 to 44,235 and the number of wounded to 104,638. The ministry’s numbers do not account for Palestinians missing and presumed dead under the rubble, which was previously estimated to be over 10,000.
A group of American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza estimated in an open letter to President Biden in October that the US-backed Israeli onslaught has killed at least 118,908 Palestinians, a total that includes indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who led the letter, told Antiwar.com in a recent interview that the estimate was the bare minimum they came up with by looking at the available data.
